Excel Nightmare...

[Tim Aucoin]

I have a Microsoft Excel file supplied by a customer that is 22 columns wide by 724 columns long. They want me to print a 60 x 70 poster from this file. I'm at a loss as to how to get this to work... Any ideas? My first instinct is to tell the customer that I will need to "import" all of this @#$%@# data into InDesign in order to make this work and charge them $1500 to do it! I've never been given such a big Excel file and asked to make a poster from it... what are people thinking?

 

[MikePro]

select range to print and export to .pdf file?

 

[ddarlak]

in excel, print the file to an adobe pdf, chose fit to page, import this into flexi or what ever you use.....

 

[drive]

select range to print and export to .pdf file?

^This
Always quote them artwork time to make it fit. Being near a few army / air force bases we get a few requests like this. Mostly for dry erase boards, but regardless, if the finished size isn't a multiple of 8.5" x 11" there could be some time spent on polishing that turd.

 

[Tim Aucoin]

Thanks for the reply's! This is a real messed up job! When I print to PDF and "fit to page"... that works, but the top 50 or so cells of text are blank! I've decided that this is now the customers issue, as they don't want to pay me to fix the file, as they "supplied art"! I told them; "no... you supplied data that needs to be turned into printable artwork". For the sake of 10 posters I think I'll "fire" this one-time customer!

 

[Jillbeans]

The last time I got one of these files (for dry erase for a factory) I was able to copy and paste to size right into Corel.
It still was kind of sucky but it was easier than I thought.
And I only tried it out of desperation (on the first try) and it worked.
Love....Jill

 

[WrapperX]

Unless you include some sort of set up charge in your pricing, most places charge to make "supplied art" useable. I just did a print job from a design firm for a vehicle wrap. Even with thier ACTUAL supplied art, (EPS's) we still have to charge them 3 hrs of set up time in making the files useable - ie: color adjustments, tileing etc. If they want you to print from what they gave you - charge them for the time it takes to make it printable. Don't argue about it, simply state that the file isn't useable in the format that they gave you. If they don't want to pay, say thank you and hopefully you can help them with a future project. However they will most likely have a different taste about it and not come back.